ABC reprimands producer for giving data to Trump campaign

ABC News said it has reprimanded its top producer for investigative reporting for giving Donald Trump’s presidential campaign proprietary exit polling data on election night 2016.

In their new book “Let Trump Be Trump,” campaign insiders Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie wrote that Chris Vlasto -- then-executive producer of “Good Morning America” and now senior executive producer for investigative reporting -- called Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, at 5:01 p.m. on election night with information being shared within a consortium of the Associated Press and the major TV networks.

“Vlasto had the early exit numbers that the consortium of news networks — the Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News — had collected,” Lewandowski and Bossie wrote. “The consortium followed eleven battleground states, including Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Trump was down in eight of the eleven states by five to eight points. The news was devastating. A kill shot.”

Two sources familiar with the consortium process told POLITICO that Vlasto should not have been providing such detailed information to people outside the group, which spends millions of dollars on exit polling and shares the information on Election Day. Representatives from the AP and TV networks crunch the numbers under strict quarantine until 5 p.m. on election night, at which time they can share the data with other members of their own organizations involved in coverage. News organizations involved in the consortium typically warn staffers not to provide specific, exit poll numbers to outsiders, especially given that the polls are still open.

The most commonly posited explanation of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory was that every professional pollster in the nation – despite each working independently and using differing methodologies – somehow managed to overlook the same pockets of Trump voters in these states. If such pockets did exist, they would have existed in varying sizes in each of the four states, thus resulting in different sized wins in each.

Ask any statistician and they’ll tell you that a reasonable distribution of the results would have been Trump winning one of the states by one percent, won one of them by perhaps three percent, won one of them by two percent, lost one of them by one percent, or something along those lines. But instead the voting tallies looked startlingly different from any natural distribution. In fact they looked startlingly the same.

According to the New York Times, the voting results broke down like this: Trump won Florida by just over one percent of the vote. He also won Pennsylvania by just over one percent. He won Michigan by just under one percent. And he won Wisconsin by precisely one percent. That’s not how numbers tend to work in the real world.

On its own, this kind of suspiciously consistent numerical dispersion across the four states that decided the election would be something that could be written off as a mere fluke. But when you put it within the context of the numerous other ways in which the voting tallies make no mathematical sense, it points to the numbers having been rigged or altered.

4. He was looking to join the Trump administration...

'Good Morning America' producer drops out of the running for Trump comms job
By ALEX ISENSTADT and SHANE GOLDMACHER 12/14/2016 05:29 PM EST Updated 12/14/2016 07:28 PM EST
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Chris Vlasto, the “Good Morning America” producer who had been under consideration to serve as a senior communications aide for President-elect Donald Trump, took himself out of contention on Wednesday evening.

Vlasto formally removed himself from consideration immediately after the publication of a POLITICO story that reported that he had been holding discussions with Trump’s transition team. Vlasto has held meetings at Trump Tower with senior staff in the past month to discuss a role, possibly as communications director.

17. Unfortunately, as we know, the 45* admin wouldn't take anyone with any sort of shady past

Vlasto had remove himself for consideration as communications director for 45* because he knew there was zero chance given that 45* was carefully vetting any potential staffers and anyone with the least but of shady activity in their past had zero chance of being hired by 45*.

Sarcasm aside, this is extremely troubling news. One question I have is how accurate exit polling has proven to be, and was there anything to suggest any statistical deviation in a few critical states? This should most certainly be looked into.

5. Reprimands?!?!?!? Fucking reprimands?

The SOB should be fired, tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, and then sued for the entire cost of the exit polling that the SOB betrayed. Fucking reprimanded? ABC needs to get their head out of the orange baboon's ass.

13. boy i feel your pain

14. Reprimand? That's nothing at all!

"Chris Vlasto, the “Good Morning America” producer who had been under consideration to serve as a senior communications aide for President-elect Donald Trump, took himself out of contention on Wednesday evening."